Aluminium Angels

OOoooooohh yeah!
I've been soooo looking forward to this :-)

Between now and Christmas I'm going to be sharing a series of posts with tutorials, taking you through a variety of projects I've been putting together for our annual Christmas dinner party.
 

For the past few years my Mum and my Aunt have been taking in turns hosting our big family Christmas dinner. In all honesty, it's turning into a bit of friendly competition as they keep trying to outdo each other in the cooking/hosting/decorating stakes! It's currently at the point where my Mum had asked me and my sister to start thinking about ideas for a theme in March!!

Now it just so happened that I won a copy of GreenCraft magazine around about the same time and it was just so inspiring that I automatically came up with the idea of having a "Recycled Christmas" as our theme this year. And I've dutifully set about making some very simple decorative items for our party.

The first project I'll be sharing is these aluminium angels - made out of old (but washed!!) tin cans.

So grab some sharp scissors and cut off the top and bottom of your cans, as well as through the length of it so you've effectively made yourself a rectangle aluminium sheet.

I experimented with making my own template for the angels which I copied onto the back side of the tin and then cut out.

Please be careful of the sharp edges and points on these - they can easily cut you. We'll deal with them at the end.

I tried a few different glues for this - even buying one which specifically stated it was for metal. But ultimately the only thing that worked was my hot glue gun. But be careful of this too because not only is the glue hot, but it will make the tin very hot also.

So glue your angel body into a cone shape, and then stick each wing on.

I made the heads by cutting some foam balls in half (keeping in mind I was trying to limit myself to recycled supplies or things I already had on hand. I'm sure there are better ways of doing this part) and sticking them onto a halo I fashioned out of pipe-cleaners. By keeping a long horizontal wire it was easier to glue it to the inside of the 'body'.

And here's all my little angels lined up in a row. Aren't they just adorable?!

To make the sharp edges less dangerous I applied a thick layer of my hot glue all along the edges and dipped them in some pretty glitter. So now they're not only safe, but sparkly!!

So are you excited now? Have I whetted your appetite? Because there's a whole lot more recycled projects coming your way soon!

PS. Let me know if you want the angel template. I planned to include it with this post, but I'm not yet that organised and was keen to get the tutorials underway :-)